That photo of the Bob Pease breadboard reminds me of the BYTE Magazine cover from the early days, a picture of a hand-wired microprocessor (might have been all TTL, no 8080 or anything) that a hobbyist made. His cat knocked over the part of it shown on the cover but the computer still ran. It was a rat's nest! (Maybe that's why the cat knocked it over)

In high school an early project was to 'bread board' an entire AM/FM transistor radio kit. (1971)

I hammered in the nails for every connection node to exactly the same height and perfectly perpendicular. Every component lead was trimmed and soldered to those nail heads with a clean and shiny dome. The radio powered up and worked the first time. It was beautiful.

Then I learned the error of my ways. The teacher expropriated the project and put it in the school display case for the next 2 years. Meanwhile I got squat.

@Duane: I have no idea how I missed it, but the top pin on my ICSP header on the right side of the board image is 0.1" lower than the I2C header on the left. That's going to bother me, like forever, I think.

I wasn't going to mention that :-) Maybe you can gome up with a reason to re-spin the board :-)

Max - In aviation, they used to say that an airplane had to look good to fly well. I'm aware that it's not necessarily true, but I pretty much have that same attitude about PCBs.

But now, I'm sad. I have no idea how I missed it, but the top pin on my ICSP header on the right side of the board image is 0.1" lower than the I2C header on the left. That's going to bother me, like forever, I think.